PEF Member Call to Action: Cost-Benefit Analysis bill needs to be law

PEF members, We need to get the Cost-Benefit Analysis bill into law. Sign and send a personalized letter to the Governor now, to support the bill! Click Here.

To further protect state jobs and save taxpayers billions of dollars, PEF is working to get Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign legislation that would regulate the process for awarding contracts for certain types of consultant services by state agencies.

“This is not the first time PEF has proposed this bill, so we made some revisions to it because it was vetoed in the past. We worked with the bill’s sponsors, state Assemblyman Harry Bronson and state Sen. Joseph Robach, and put in some new language,” Amorosi said.

The bill regulates the process for awarding outside contracts. If signed, it would amend the state finance law. It would not allow a state agency to enter a contract for consultant services anticipated to cost more than $750,000 in a twelve month period unless the agency has conducted a review to determine whether or not state employees could do the same job, for the same amount of money or a lower cost.

The state comptroller would also review the completed business plan.

Amorosi pointed out the bill provides reasonable exceptions, such as in cases that require specialized services, urgent or short-term projects, or where the agency can demonstrate a quantifiable improvement in services that cannot be reasonably duplicated by state employees.

New York state spends more than $2 billion per year on consultants. In this era of transparency and fiscal responsibility, PEF is moving forward to get this bill signed by the governor by the end of this year.